


In Death

by EHyde



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Crossover, Drabble, Gen, canon character death, post-season-five btvs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-10 01:10:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EHyde/pseuds/EHyde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Buffy jumps through Glory's portal, she encounters someone with a similar calling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Death

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from my tumblr when I was doing crossover prompts, this one turned into something I thought was worth posting over here.

Buffy stands up. She doesn’t recognize this place, but she knew what she was doing when she jumped through Glory’s portal. She knows where she is.

Water laps at her feet. Last time she died, she was drowned. Maybe she does recognize the place.

As she stands, something else does too, a shadowy figure that’s  _wrong_  in the same way that vamps are wrong. With barely a thought she leaps in front of it and lays it out with a quick punch and a kick. As it falls, the water carries it away, back in the direction it should have been going.

In the direction Buffy needs to go.

She starts walking but a clear sound rings out, stopping her in her tracks. She turns to face a woman, about her own age, with short dark hair and some sort of renaissance fair costume. She’s wearing a sword and she looks like she knows how to use it, so, maybe not a costume. But it wasn’t the sword that made the sound, it was the silver bell that the woman’s holding.

"Let me go," Buffy says. "I’ve got somewhere to be."

"Most souls aren’t so … energetic," says the woman. "You seem like you’re at home here."

Buffy shrugs. “It’s a gift,” she says. The woman frowns and performs some sort of complicated gestures with her free hand—some kind of magic? She’s  _not_  dead, but she belongs here too. Not like she’s at home, though—more like … like she’s patrolling.

"Your spirit has barely left you," the woman says. "It’s not corrupted at all. I could send you back."

"No," says Buffy, shaking her head. "This had to happen." She pauses. "It’s not for  _me_ , you understand?”

The woman nods. “I understand.”

"So …" Buffy gestures downstream. "You know what’s down there?"

"Beyond the final gate, no one knows."

That feels  _right_ , somehow. “Well, I see any more bad guys on my way there, I’ll take ‘em out for you, how’s that sound?”

"That sounds good," the woman says, with slight smile. She pulls out a second bell and rings it, but Buffy asks one final question before she leaves.

"If … if someone were to try to bring me back, you’d stop them. That’s what you do?"

"That’s what I do."

"Good." And Buffy turns and walks, toward the sound of a waterfall and whatever lies beyond.


End file.
